The Origins of the Tutsi and the Hutu

Rwandan history is construed based on your political bent. If you are pro-Hutu, you have one dispensation and if you are pro-Tutsi, you have another. The divisions have largely to do with whether Hutu and Tutsi signify two distinct peoples and, relatedly, if the Tutsi are a foreign people.

The pro-Tutsi line of reasoning sees no distinction between Hutu and Tutsi. This division was created by the Belgian colonists based on social class. Rich people were designated Tutsi, while poor were deemed Hutu.

The pro-Hutu stance is that the Tutsi arrived to the region from elsewhere. This argument follows the colonial racialization of Hutu and Tutsi. As Mamdani asserts, the Belgians did not create the Hutu and the Tutsi, but they did racialize them. The colonists viewed the Tutsi as members of a superior race. The pro-Hutu stance believes that the Tutsi are a Hamitic people and thus, nonindigenous to the region.

The stereotypes of both groups involve the belief that the Tutsi have historically been pastoralists while the Hutu have been agriculturalists. This reinforces the belief that the Tutsi migrated from elsewhere. It also perpetuates the idea that the Tutsi constitute a higher social class, because cows were associated with wealth. But the stereotypes of the Tutsi pastoralist and the Hutu agriculturalist are muddied by history. The idea of the Hutu-Tutsi division on the basis of social class flatly ignores the existence of poor Tutsi.

These debates have had tragic consequences for the people of Rwanda. Hutu Power argued in the early 1990s that the Tutsi were foreigners and posed a threat to the indigenous Hutu. This fear helped to instigate the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi in 1994. After the genocide, when the Tutsi-led RPF took power, the leadership argued that there was no division, going so far as to outlaw the terms. That has served to legitimize their ethnic minority rule. It also gives persecuted Hutu no recourse to protest their treatment because the source of their oppression is legally nonexistent.

Hiernaux argues that the Tutsi are “elongated Africans” from East Africa that have adapted to the life of desert nomads. This line of reasoning shows that while Tutsi and Hutu are different people, the Tutsi do not constitute a foreign race. Mamdani adds that Tutsi migration likely did not occur in one invasion, but happened gradually.

The pro-Hutu and pro-Tutsi beliefs as to their origins need to be considered critically and tested against history.

Ascribing Blame

Rene Lemarchand's most recent book on political violence in the Great Lakes region has two fundamental problems. He's writing in the context of the West's guilt over the 1994 genocide committed by Hutu against mostly Tutsi victims. His point is that the Tutsi-led RPF has committed massacres and those need to be condemned as well. It's a fair point.

One of the problems is sloppiness. His book is really just a collection of essays written over several years. The problem is that he never mentions that fact. As a reader, you are forced to guess when the chapter was written based on the events he discusses. Sometimes, he has evidence that Paul Kagame is responsible for the shooting down of Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana's plane, but other times, no one knows who is responsible and we may never know. Lemarchand should've mentioned that it was a collection of essays from over the years and labeled each chapter as such or updated all of his essays.

The worse problem is that he ascribes partial blame for the genocide to Paul Kagame. He argues that because Kagame led the RPF invasion, which enhanced the Tutsi threat in the eyes of the Hutu, Kagame also deserves responsibility for the killings committed by the Hutu militias. While the RPF invasion is important in order to contextualize the genocide, the RPF did not engage in the genocide, though they did kill Hutu civilians during the civil war, and thus cannot be blamed for it.

Kagame and the RPF must be held responsible for their own human rights violations, but not those of Hutu Power. It is irresponsible of Lermchand to insinuate Kagame has any responsibility to the interahamwe's murder of Tutsi civilians. it is the difference between context and justification. To mention the RPF invasion in the same sentence as the 1994 genocide is to provide context. To argue that without the RPF invasion in 1990, the genocide would not have happened, is plausible if irrelevant. But that is different than assigning blame for the genoocide to Kagame. When blame is given to Kagame, that gives justification tot he genocide because the Hutu militia are suddenly not fully responsible for the murders they committed.